Catching Fairies

1996

C-type photographic print

45 x 65 cm

I find it curious that we so often record and document things going on around us. It seems we can't quite appreciate the existence of something unless we can capture and preserve it.

Catching fairies was meant as an allegorical expression of this thought.

In the images, I stand to my thighs in muddy water vainly attempting to capture fairies in a fishing net. These beings by definition are ephemeral, which makes my pursuit futile and absurd: to capture them would be to destroy them.